#i know its not 1 for 1 classic gothic but it follows the major thematic elements i promise

[cheshire-castle-library]

Taking a spin on one of the activities from Neil Gaiman's masterclass, but not being exceptionally confident about the suggested list ended up throwing a bunch of movies and books and genre i was familiar with into a randomizer and ended up with Promare as a Gothic Horror. This fandom is underfed, so thought I'd share these hatching brainworms.

Gonna tell you, i started with the lake because its the only location location that's really important to the movie plot, and went from there.... thus the.. doodle in the middle. Was me thinking about how to make promare more "condensed" while still having similar goals and meaning.

Anyway have fun with "industrial gothic horror!Promare au"!

[hydralisk98]

16^12 lore dump #1 (from 1 to 11496 HE)

This entry of lore about Angora's focus planet will be about from the late Mesolithic / Neolithic global period (think of it as one calendar starting from year 1 of the "Holocene Era", approximated as -10000 BC for Gregorian calendar people) to the late medieval period (115th century HE, equivalent to the late 15th century AD in our world, or literally around the corner of year 4096 in this reality's Utchwe 'official canon' calendar)

(the main storyline time-wise extent goes to the 145th century of that same calendar due to the expected lifespan of Tano Blackhand's young adulthood twenties period is around that end period. Do know that though that it is a complicated matter even then due to Stellaris campaigns, the post-game lore I envision and overall psychics + ultra tech time-manipulation matters making that specific species normally out of sight to contemporary traditional human clades. Don't fear for eldritch and losses in thematics though because while such a "mothfolk" clade from that "far" future might clash genetically with the biome of Angora a tad bit, they are still a somewhat relatable sapient light influence with humble / modest means to their galactic homeland timespans than most of the galaxy at this time. Plus time itself can be fairly conservative and preserving of everybody involved in its causal effects and relationships except in the circumstances where significant changes are enacted to the wider world. For example, if that mothfolk individual chats with some humans, providing information insights about the future or most of anything really, that information is more likely to become irrelevant or lost before it can reach wider change implications especially if it heavily contradicts several meta-narratives. However there are exceptions that may still allow such change to influence much or perhaps even snowball granted a few conditions about the existential whole, as in if a major part of the galaxy becomes inhabitable for intelligence or biologically advanced lifeforms due to key interventions in the past like a widely successful nemesis event, a post-game cosmic war in the heavens... that definitely forces the timeline to adapt themselves to the new set reality trend they are presented to, likewise to how in a game of "5D Chess with Multiverse Time-Travel" the "objective present" moves and shifts across the time axis with deterministic chess pieces moving across the boards depending on a few rules and conditions defined by the game engine / system being played.)

In a nutshell, the following timeline is mostly about the worldly progression of Angora from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to the very dawn of the colonial period, going through the agriculture revolution + Copper age, the Bronze Age (and its partial but brutal collapse), the Classical age, the Axial age, the early medieval "Insular" period and the late medieval "Gothic" periods (just enough to be up to speed for running a gothic-tier medieval fantastical lower-magic setting rendition really)

Mesolithic / Neolithic / Copper (PARIAH)

~

Bronze Age (Jackals & Testament & TrojanWar)

To be written eventually

Classical Age (Arkadia / Olympia / Gostor)

~

Axial Age (EternalRome / AgeOfAntiquity / AdventurersGuideToTheBible / AGEMA's RomeIsBurning! content )

~

Insular Age (OSR / ICRPG / Knave?)

~

Gothic Age (D&D 5E Pathfinder 2E / Sengoku Revised Edition's Bundle / FKR?)

To be written eventually

(Remember to insert some more cute fitting graphics, a few tweaked renders and a handful of strong bullet points, divided between a few time-period-specific lists for ease of reading here)

[vjdarkworld]

NieR: Automata Review (SPOILER FREE! NO SPOILERS HERE!)

Score: Must-Play, anyone who loves videogames should play this as soon as possible.

// Read my Reviewing system for Context of Score

Nier Automata is Yoko Taro’s first game to ever get both critical and commercial success which he has earned it rightfully. For why I believe Automata is a masterpiece is because of the ending. As everything in the game builds up to one gameplay moment. And that gameplay moment is an emotional climax all because of a well crafted journey. Yes the game’s story is told through cutscenes, dialogue, music, etc, but when the climax of the story is GAMEPLAY it just reminds me why we play videogames in the first place. 

The Good:

Gameplay

Nier References

Art Direction

The Bad:

Unoptimized port for PC

Little support for PC version

The Best:

Music

Messages/themes

The Ending

Meaningful Sidequests

2B

The Good:

Gameplay:

This is a PlatinumGames game, so of course the gameplay is good. When it originally announced that Yoko Taro would be helming a Nier sequel with PlatinumGames it was an instant "hype" moment because the original Nier had quite simple gameplay. Pitting PlatinumGames expertise with fluid combo oriented hack n slashes with Yoko Taro's crazy storytelling and it was a match made in GAMERRRRRR Heaven. But how did they deliver?

Well they did deliver, in the context of this game. This is an RPG, so the game is story based. Thus, PlatinumGames decided to make this the most simple out of their hack n slash titles. Basically you can spam dodge and attack buttons and mostly cruise through the main story IF you really want to. But the combo system does actually have a little depth to it, and you can pull of some fun wacky stuff once you know some tricks.

Even a recurring simple minigame that will happen a lot throughout a playthrough was fine by me. Some people were bother by it, but it's an easy enough mini game that does have a major story payoff in the end so it's all worth it.

And to cap it off, the way that abilities and special attacks are unlocked is pretty unique. Effectively you’re doing ability item management, which has some limitations but it's a fun way to make it thematic with robots.

Which I think is why the gameplay is so good regardless of its weak points is because it was all made within the theme of androids. I'm not going to mention every cute detail but I will finish off talking about gameplay with one controversial design choice: no autosaves. Instead you manually have to save at save stations. Maybe it's because I have played all the From Software Soul's games but it didn't annoy me. Really the save points are frequent in Automata that it doesn't effect it that much. And just like in Souls games, the save points have a thematic purpose of "saving your data" to the in-universe network. Basically the manual save is there as a meta-element. And again there's many other examples of this but this is Yoko Taro's strong suits, metaphorical gameplay.

Nier References:

Nier Automata is part of a strange series that spans two different games. In fact, here's the series order:

Drakengard 3 -> Drakengard 1 -> Nier Gestalt / Nier Replicant -> Nier Automata.

Yeah, that's pretty wild. So it's understandable that you may be worried about going into Nier Automata without a clue of what's going on due to ~Lore~ reasons. "Do I really need to watch a Let's Play on Youtube of some niche game, or worse LPs of all the niche games??" Worry not, as you absolutely don't need to... well right away atleast.

To break it down, no you don't need to play the Drakengard as all the references to it are just cute references. 

Yes there are characters and side quests that are deeply connected to OG Nier, but they have no bearing on the main story being told. They are supplementary knowledge that helps both boost the main story and help provide additional emotional moments IF you have played Nier. But again, understanding what happens with the main characters is all self-contained within this game.

Now do I recommend playing OG Nier? Yes, in fact I believe that is another Must-Play game, but I specifically recommend PLAYING it. Watching a let's play on youtube will not do it justice.

To summarize, if you play Nier Automata without playing OG Nier you will be perfectly fine. You will be confused at first, but that is intentional and all will be revealed by end of the story. But, once you beat this game, you will probably get the urge to play the first game and THAT'S when you play it. Don't spoil the first Nier's experience, ya can wait it out.

Art Direction:

From the characters, to enemies, and locations the vibe is clearly of apocalypse, but there is almost a level of cuteness to it all strangely enough.

Our android protagonists, and the group they’re in called Yorha, are decked out in futuristic style gothic lolita fashion. The enemies almost look like the smartphone brand Android's mascot. With a round head, an oval body, dainty arms/legs, and tiny eyes they look quite innocent.

While there's the obvious ruined city, abandoned factory, and barren desert locations for a "post-apocalypse distant future" setting there's actually some surprise appearances. To not give too much away, two standout areas would be a 2001 A Space Odyssey rotating spacestation and a cheery amusement park.

All in all, the art direction is pretty nice. But, I need to address the elephant in the room. The 2B "controversy", specifically her butt.

Alright some context needs to be given to understand this stupidity, so bear with me. This timeline will explain it all, for the Western World specifically:

NieR Gestalt releases to little fanfare. It doesn't have much critical or commercial success, but it does get a cult following.

NieR Automata gets announced at E3 to little fanfare. The diehard fans are hyped beyond belief, but everyone else doesn't care. Though everyone is amused by Yoko Taro's antics with the emil mask.

A puzzle platformer on Steam gets greenlight and released by the name of Haydee. The title is the name of the games TITular protagonist, a robot that for some reason has huge breasts and butt. It gains a major following, spawning lots of pornography being made of this character.

NieR Automata's free demo releases on PSN. Because of the people going off of (and getting off on) the previous robot girl, people all of a sudden are extremely horny towards 2B (even though they didn't care about her for 2 years up until this point) A lot of pornography is created of 2B, most notable is a screenshot edit that starts the "controversy". An upskirt screenshot of 2B climbing a ladder is edited so that she has an asshole visible. People thought it was a real screenshot and went even more ballistic. Even after confirmed fake, people stayed horny for her.

NieR Automata releases. This time, because everyone regardless if they were horny or not, has seen the protagonist 2B all over the internet. Since everyone is hyped over 2B (and not because of the cult-classic series), NieR Automata has both critical and commercial success.

Alright, now that you are caught up, I can confirm that.... yes, 2B is cute. Yes, she has a butt. But, there's barely any fanservice of her in the game. If you’re not going up a ladder, you basically have to glitch the camera to be able to see under her skirt, and even then she pushes your camera controls away. If you detonate as her you will see her in the leotard but uhh Wonder Woman shows more skin than 2B so I honestly have no idea why some people are so pissed off at her. Some people even refuse to play the game cus of her which is really silly.....

I'm going to leave off on that for now. I will come back to that later, but let's finally get to The Bad.

The Bad:

Unoptimized PC Port:

You’re going to need a graphics card leading on the high end side if you want to see the pretty graphics.

Also, FAR mod is required if you want optimization. You’re going to need to look that up before playing.

Now I do put this in the bad category, and many people want to boycott PlatinumGames and Nier Automata for this unoptimized port, but that's going too FAR (get it). I'm going to give the context as to why this happened:

While I didn't play the PS4 version, I have heard reports of poor framerates at certain points. This leads to the revelation... this game was really only made optimized for PS4 Pro. Which I think it still lags there but not too much.

Anyways, so Square Enix decides that since Nier Automata is part of a niche franchise they might as well put it on Steam to get a quick extra bucks. So they have a quick port job happen by who knows what and boom it's on Steam.

So basically, the major problem here is Square Enix. It almost seems like they don't respect the game. No amount of "boycotting" by random people on Steam of a masterpiece game will make the company retract their thought process. SE has their FFXIV money printer, there is no incentive for them to fix a niche game. It's sad but true. And in fact, not buying the game proves their point that only FFXIV will make them money.

Now I don't condone a bad port job, this is why it's in the bad but.... the game is still perfectly playable even if you put all the grafix as low as possible, which is what I did. The only times the game crashed was when I tried to max out the graphics and resolution beyond what my PC could handle and made my GPU be at 100% usage for too long.

Little Patch Support:

This goes off of the other point. There's only been a couple of stealth patches for the DLC release, but nothing addressing the optimization. Again, it's sad that Square Enix isn't treating the game with the respect it has earned.

The Best

Music:

As the old saying goes, film is 70% audio and 30% visual. Of course that is an exaggeration, but it's trying to get across how important a soundtrack can be to making a movie iconic.

Now why am I talking about all that? Well. OG Nier had such a beautiful OST that it could be the sole reason why it got such a cult following.

Automata is no different, the music here is simply breathtaking. But listening to the OST alone doesn't do it justice, as the music is contextualized within the game perfectly. Every area has such a distinct song that I can FEEL that area when I hear the song out of the game. And without saying spoilers, the credits song makes me FEEL the ending all over again. Hell, even when I heard a song from the first Nier in this game I almost cried for real.

The music just compliments the moments within the game so well, that the music MAKES the game. And that playing the game makes the music more emotional. If you love music in games, or music in general, you gotta play Nier Automata.

Message/Themes:

As you probably know already, Yoko Taro is an odd fellow. You can lump him with other japanese videogame auteur directors ala Kojima and Kamiya. But what makes Yoko Taro different from Kojima's wacky metaphors is his consistency.

Right from Drakengard 1 Yoko-san established his auteur theme: Violence in Videogames. He explains that for a videogame protagonist to slaughter thousands of people, he has to be a crazy psychopath. The enemies in that game beg and plead to not kill. But, after 9/11 his view changed. So, in the first Nier he went with a different concept. That someone can discriminately kill without remorse if they believe their cause is Righteous. I can't say how this is achieved as spoiler, but you get the picture. Automata continues the violence theme off of the Nier idea.

There's other themes, but that's the main one.

The Ending:

The True ending is quite possibly why I think the game is a masterpiece. The entire game is building up to this climax.

Every sidequest, all the confusion is finally explained (albiet maybe too quickly). But that's just one of many twists. In which the final sequence has so many false finishes that I truly believed where the ending that the final moment caught me off guard. This last finale is what justifies getting through the entire game, regardless if you don't like hack n slash games. The trick done too is so simple that it being the emotional climax in my opinion proves it’s a masterpiece.

Meaningful Sidequests:

When going through the game, understanding what is going on is confusing. Hell even the prologue is confusing. This is intentional, because information is being kept from you. While The Truth is only revealed at the end, nearly all side-quests foreshadow the ending.

The side-quests are special in that each one has some type of twist to it. They all seem like some ordinary RPG fetch quest, but there's always a twist. Sometimes it's happy, sometimes it's sad, but they can catch you off guard.

But as I was saying, the twists of these side-quests don't stop there, as once you beat the game and know The Truth you will have a epiphany if you think back to side quests you have done. They give hints to the Truth, sometimes the events in the side-quests mirror what was revealed. It's quite awesome how well this was put together.

This is all most likely cus Yoko Taro creates stories backwards, starting with the ending and going to the start. And also why the ending is so good.

I've seen some people say they think the "twist" of the game is "practicable"... but considering the entire game is hinting at it, hiding in plain sight, I would say no... foreshadowing isn't practicability, it's good storytelling plain and simple.

2B:

I already talked about the controversy with 2B being cute and having a butt, but(t) to wind down I want to address something as my final point. The thing is I don't know if Yoko Taro is a puppet master genius, or how intentional was this but.... people's obsessive hype over 2B has a payoff as a moment within the game.

To give a little context, the lady from the previous Nier, Kaine was extremely scantily clad with purpose. It being to challenge body norms, and people fell hook line in sinker. People said she was way too sexy and only eye candy, and even barring the amazing character arc she has, there is a part of her body that's really only hinted at within the game. I won't spoil it, so Let me go back to 2B.

Now 2B is cute, and everyone loves how 2B looks or wanting to be knee-jerk contrarian cus of the annoying horny people. Here's the thing, this is addressed in the game. This obsessive of 2B is reflected back at the player in one moment. I have no idea if Yoko Taro knew there would be this fervor over the games protagonist but mannnnn,

I think we all got played, hook line and sinker. Ya got us good Yoko Taro.

Details of Playthrough

I played on PC, bought on Steam. FAR mod used as well. I had a pretty low/midrange spec going in, so i had to play everything on low at 900p, also using FAR mod to turn off lighting effects. Still, I had framerate drops at certain areas. Game crashed if I played on higher settings, but keeping it on low stopped that.

My Specs (at the time of playthrough):

CPU: i5-2400

GPU: Radeon R9 270 Sapphire

RAM: 16GB